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She turned once and said to Sir Hugh, “Thank you. Your willingness to believe in the possibility of my i
He watched her with shadowed eyes and said nothing.
The stranger ushered her out and, after locking the cell door behind her, led the small group up the stairs and through the guardroom. This late at night, only the Knights on duty were awake, so the room in the tower was nearly empty. Two men who had not fared so well when the intruders entered, lay close to the door. They were quickly moved out of sight from casual view.
“They’re not dead,” the leader reassured Linsha when he saw the look of pained dismay on her face.
At the door, he held her back and placed a light helm over her head to hide her tell-tale curls. “We brought an extra man with us,” he explained. “So four arrived and four will leave.”
Linsha settled the helm carefully over her bruised face. “The man you had to carry down?” It wasn’t much of guess.
“Yes, but he is a gift to your circle.”
One of the other “Knights” chuckled. “He’s a spy from the Knights of Neraka we caught a few days ago. Sent by Beryl. We thought your Knights should have him.”
In the brighter light from the oil lamps around the room, Linsha finally recognized the other two men as well. Legio
“He didn’t want to know. Something about Solamnic jurisdiction.” The tall Legio
Linsha picked up a light cloak from a hook on the wall and threw it over her shoulders to help disguise her shape. “How did you get in here?” she asked softly.
“We told the gate warden we had messages for the Senior Knight from the elves outside Silvanesti. We have delivered our message, and we are leaving. Now.”
As he said the word, he stepped out the door and strode to a post where four horses stood hitched. Linsha came behind without hesitation, followed closely behind by the other two. Silently, with stern purpose, they mounted and rode through the outer ward to the castle’s main gate. A small postern door had been placed on the right side of the stout iron bound gates. It had already been closed and locked again for the night, but a sentry came quickly at their approach.
“You’re not staying the night?” he said in some surprise. “It is a long way back to Silvanesti without rest.”
“Our commander told us to return as quickly as possible,” Lanther said, adding just the right amount of world-weary disgust in his tone.
The sentry shrugged. Holding his torch in one hand, he began to turn the lock in the postern door.
Linsha glanced surreptitiously around the outer ward. From her position near the main gate, she could see the stony ramparts of the i
Lanther and the two Legio
Linsha strained to listen, her body taut as a bowstring. Her horse, sensing her tension, tossed his head and sidled nervously into the horse beside him, who jumped forward into Lanther’s mount. In that brief moment of jostling horses, Lanther glanced back, and Linsha caught his eye and jerked her head toward the i
In that moment the click of the lock came loud and very welcome. The sentry began to pull the gate open. A distant, muffled shout sounded from the i
Shouts echoed from wall to wall; a horn blew an alarm from the i
Linsha heard the sharp snap of several bows and the thrum of speeding arrows, but the shafts missed the last horse by several lengths. The surprise had been complete enough that the four escapees were out of range before the archers could find their targets. Linsha lifted her head into the wind and gri
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a silhouette, a ghastly shape on the hillside, showing black against the stars-the gallows, nearly complete and waiting for morning. It could continue to wait, Linsha thought. Let Sir Remmik find some other use for it. She was away.
Hogan Bight, Lord Governor of the port city of Sanction, stalked down the long corridor toward his suite of rooms. He walked the gait of a man pushed beyond endurance, and at every step, he slapped his thigh with his gauntlet in the ma
For a day that had begun in such promise and hope, yesterday had ended in despair. Sanction should have been free by this time. It should have been celebrating. Instead, the inhabitants of the city were burying their dead, treating their wounded, and wondering what had happened. The victory they had pla
Lord Bight still was not certain how it had failed. The Knights of Neraka had been routed! They fled the battlefield in a state of total panic. But something-or someone-had turned them back, and only by the grace of the moats of lava and the fury of the defenders of Sanction had they been thrown back at the very walls of the city.
Now everything was as it was before. The siege still continued; the enemy still camped at the gates. He still needed the Solamnics to bring men and supplies.
Lord Bight cracked a glove against his thigh again. Gods, how he hated the Knights of Neraka. This was his city. He had rebuilt it almost from the ground up. He had given Sanction his devotion, his wisdom, his time, and his strength. Yet the Knights were determined to get it hack, and they were crumbling it out of his grasp a little hit every day.
Yawning, he reached his apartment and slammed the door in the faces of his guards. Let them stand their posts out there tonight. Just let an intruder or assassin dare enter his room. He would welcome something to vent his rage upon. Striding into the front room, he stopped, his arms akimbo.
“Out!” he bellowed.
His two servants bowed once and cleared the rooms. They knew better than to argue when their lord was in this mood.
Lord Bight found himself alone at last. He stretched to work some of the stiffness out of his aching muscles, then one by one he shed his bloody, smoke-stained garments and kicked them in a pile. He would give anything for a swim in the bay, but it was too late-or too early-for that. It would be dawn soon and he would be needed in the city. He would have to settle for a bath in the garden bath house.